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The cold, damp air clings to Poe’s clothes as his he slowly trudges along the winding, dimly lit path, the pavement cracked from long years of weathering and neglect. Dark clouds loom overhead threatening to empty themselves over all of Yokohama, all over the barren wasteland of the graveyard.
Poe weakly pulls his coat tighter around his body in a futile attempt to keep himself warm, despite the fact that he could never do the same for his heart. Poe finally reaches his destination, a small grave. The gravestone is new and the earth is still fresh, having been newly laid with small shoots of grass beginning to appear on the mound. Blinking the tears out of his eyes so he can see, Poe carefully leans down and with shaking hands, lifts the old, wilted flowers out of the vase next to the headstone before replacing them with a fresh bouquet of small yellow and white chrysanthemums, painfully being reminded of their torturous meaning as his vision is once again obscured with tears.
Nothing would ever be the same. Nothing could fill the void in Poe’s aching heart as he kneels at the grave, hunched over as he clings to himself, trying to hold back the sobs that threaten to rack his body. He doesn’t dare to look up at the name on the headstone, it would make the situation too real. It would solidify the truth that he is so desperately trying to avoid. Those 4 simple letters engraved into stone, representing the horror of what had happened to him a week prior… the undeniable fact that his best friend wasn’t coming back. That Karl was gone and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
He never thought that this would ever happen, not like this. Not that Poe would open his door that day to such a violent, brutal, horrific scene. Not to Karl’s small lifeless body lying across his doorstep brutally torn apart with a bloody letter revealing some vengeful criminal had been behind this, purposely tearing down Poe’s world as payback for a case he had helped Ranpo solve a month earlier. The moment he saw the horrid scene Poe’s mind had stopped. His chest tightened and he couldn’t breathe. His eyes felt hot as tears painfully pricked at the corners of his tired eyes and he fell to the ground, scooping up Karl into his arms and tightly clutching the small limp animal to his chest as the greif consumed him. He had knelt there for hours sobbing before he had managed to calmed down enough to shakily remove his phone from his pocket and dial the number of the only person who would care. Lucy had dropped everything to rush to his apartment and comfort him, hugging the poor man as he sobbed before coaxing him into letting go of the now stiff raccoon in his arms. She had helped him to organise the burial and held his hand through the process of the entire ordeal for which Poe was eternally grateful for. There was one thing though, that was just a double punch in the gut.
Ranpo had been ignoring him for the past month and was completely absent while he went through this entire traumatic experience. Poe had grown to consider his old rival one of his closest friends over the past few months, helping Ranpo save the agency multiple times and spending many days just hanging out with him and enjoying his presence. Poe had admired and adored Ranpo and the detective had become very dear to the writer. Though devastatingly, after the Agency was deemed safe from the Decay Of The Angels, Poe had been cast aside and Ranpo had completely ignored his attempts to reach out. Soon it began to dawn on Poe that Ranpo had possibly just been using him and his ability for his own goals. And as much as he didn’t mind using his ability for helping the agency, the looming thought that Ranpo possibly didn’t just not enjoy his company but could possibly dislike him altogether, tortured Poe’s heart. He tried desperately to deny it, try to assure himself that Ranpo was just busy but the more time that passed, the more the truth became undeniable….
Ranpo didn’t care about him and never had. He had been a fool and let his guard down and it tortured Poe to the soul. As well as this, Karl, his best friend who had faithfully stayed by his side through years of his struggling, was never coming back. His last memory of the lifeless body seared into his memories forever, flashing before his eyes whenever he is reminded of Karl’s missing presence. As Poe finally allows the sobs to escape his throat the dark, swollen clouds open up and pour their heavy rains over the Yokohama, soaking Poe to the bone and turning the ground beneath him to mud, staining his clothes.
As much as it tortures Poe to admit, his life could never be the same again…